Brandt Snedeker named 2024 Payne Stewart Award winner

Growing up on the municipal golf courses of Nashville, Tennessee, as a slender, shaggy-haired blond with an infectious smile, Brandt Snedeker’s favorite player was Payne Stewart. Snedeker’s family  and the PGA Tour champion shared roots in Springfield, Missouri. (Snedeker's father's side grew up there while his mother went to college there.) Now they share something else in common.

Snedeker, a 43-year-old nine-time PGA Tour winner, has been named the 2024 recipient of the Tour’s Payne Stewart Award presented by Southern Company. The award is presented annually to a professional golfer who best exemplifies Stewart’s steadfast values of character, charity and sportsmanship.

“It’s an amazing honor and privilege to be a recipient of this award,” said Snedeker. “When you’re recognized for an award like this, it means not only are you a good player, but you’re a good person. This was one of my dreams and it came true.”

The announcement was made on Tuesday fittingly at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, the site of his bookend victories. Snedeker notched his maiden Tour title, shooting 63 at Forest Oaks, then tournament host, in the final round in 2007, and went on to be named the Tour’s Rookie of the Year. In 2018, he opened with a 59 at Sedgefield Country Club, becoming the 10th player in Tour history to post a sub-60 round in competition, and won the Wyndham Championship for a second time and his ninth and most recent trophy. Known for his quick-twitch swing that produces precision irons and a jab putting stroke that has long been the envy of the Tour, Snedeker won the 2012 FedEx Cup title and a bonus of $10 million, which led Golfweek to take liberty with his longtime nickname and use the cheeky headline “$ned$.”

But Snedeker took his new-found wealth as an opportunity to launch the Snedeker Foundation shortly thereafter with his wife Mandy. For more than a decade, the organization has focused its efforts on supporting youth initiatives on both the social and athletic fronts across Middle Tennessee. Our Kids, one of the Foundation’s most prominent initiatives, provides expert medical evaluations and crisis counseling services in response to concerns of child sexual abuse. Since 1987, Our Kids has evaluated more than 30,000 children with 65 percent of them being age 7 or younger.

Another focus of Snedeker’s charitable giving has been geared toward the junior game, where he has helped provide a platform for the next generation of golfers to reach their potential through the Sneds Tour. In partnership with the Tennessee Golf Foundation, the Sneds Tour is a year-round junior golf tour that operates 174 events and makes the game more accessible by providing lower entry and registration fees.

"I can't wait for a kid to get his Tour card who played on Sneds Tour growing up, same junior tour I played on growing up," Snedeker said.

In line with providing support to aspiring golfers, the Snedeker Foundation teamed up with the Tennessee Golf Foundation in December 2023 to fund the creation of a practice facility for Nashville Christian School, which will be used in a collaborative effort between those students and the Tennessee School for the Blind.

Additionally, since 2017, he has served as host of the Korn Ferry Tour’s Simmons Bank Open for the Snedeker Foundation, which has raised more than $1 million for charities in the region. The tournament was awarded Korn Ferry Tour Tournament of the Year in 2022.

“Brandt Snedeker exemplifies everything the Payne Stewart Award represents,” said PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan. “As one of our game’s most respected players, Brandt has displayed a steadfast commitment to using his platform to better the lives of so many families in his home state of Tennessee. He and Mandy have worked tirelessly to build their family foundation and establish opportunities for children on and off the golf course, and it’s inspiring to know those efforts will continue for years to come.”

Snedeker is the 27th recipient of the Payne Stewart Award, joining a distinguished group of respected golfers including Gary Koch, who was recognized in 2023, and the inaugural recipients Byron Nelson, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer (2000). Snedeker will be honored on Tuesday, August 27, at the Payne Stewart Award Ceremony in conjunction with the Tour Championship. The ceremony will be televised live on Golf Channel as part of a “Golf Central” special from 7-8 p.m. ET at the Southern Exchange in downtown Atlanta.

"I went to it every year I played the Tour Championship and just saw these heroes, icons of mine kind of breaking down on stage and going through what they've given back in their communities and kind of reinforce what the Tour's all about, right? About sportsmanship, about affecting your hometown, having your foundation affecting your hometown in a positive way, doing stuff the right way. So I always really thought highly of that."

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Brandt Snedeker named 2024 Payne Stewart Award winner